The Milady Maker NFT collection has been on OpenSea since August 2021.
It consists of nearly 10,000 NFTs on Ethereum, which have so far generated a total trading volume of more than 45,000 ETH (more than USD 26 million).
However, until April 2023 it had never exceeded 1,500 ETH in weekly trading volume, but in April it experienced a sales boom.
Suffice it to say that the average weekly selling price of its NFTs had never exceeded 2 ETH until April, but by the beginning of May it had already risen to over 3.5 ETH, with a total weekly trading volume of more than 4,400 ETH.
So it is a collection of NFTs that have been on the rise in recent weeks, despite being almost two years old.
Elon Musk’s intervention causes Milady NFTs to explode on OpenSea
On Wednesday, Elon Musk posted a tweet showing one of the images from the Milady Maker collection.
It is unclear whether or not Musk knew that this image was part of the said NFT collection, so he commented on it by saying “there is no meme, I love you”.
There is no meme’ is actually a meme, it just uses a different image each time.
The image used by Musk to create this meme is definitely from the Milady Maker collection, but has been modified by adding a red-out frame.
Nevertheless, the NFT Miladys were taken by storm yesterday.
Milady Maker: the boom of the NFT collection on OpenSea
The base price jumped to 4.15 ETH and the weekly volume jumped to over 11,000 ETH, even though it has only been a little over four days since the start of the week.
In other words, four days of trading volume was almost three times that of the entire previous week, and almost a quarter of the entire historical trading volume of Miladys NFTs on OpenSea was concentrated in the last few days.
It is not clear whether Elon Musk was aware of what he was doing, or whether he was doing it deliberately to make a profit, perhaps having previously bought some of these NFTs.
What is clear, however, is that the Twitter patron is still able to exert a strong influence on the crypto markets.
Elon Musk’s influence on the crypto markets
On the other hand, while he has not been able to get the price of his beloved Dogecoin to recover for some time now, he has also been able to move the price of Floki, or previously Shiba Inu, quite a bit.
Apart from Dogecoin, of which Musk is known to be a supporter and has even bought some, it has never been made clear whether he also had FLOKI or SHIB in his portfolio before his tweets pumped up their prices.
However, it must be stressed that in the medium to long term, Musk does not seem to be able to maintain the value of a memecoin.
His interventions are only able to move prices in the crypto markets quickly and significantly for short or very short periods of time.
For example, right now the price of Dogecoin is -90% from its highs, as well as Floki and Shiba Inu.
So these are short or very short term dynamics that often disappear once the hype dies down.
Perhaps this will also be the case for the NFT miladys, although their little April boom started well before Musk’s tweet.
The NFT Market
Overall, April 2023 was not a particularly good month for NFT trading on OpenSea.
Total monthly volume was around $285 million, compared to $383 million in March.
However, last month’s volume was still higher than that of November 2022, when it barely exceeded $255 million.
The current figures are far from the historical monthly peak of $4.8 billion in January 2022, but are still significantly higher than in the first half of 2021.
In other words, the NFT market has deflated somewhat from the resounding bubble of the second half of 2021, but is by no means back to pre-bubble levels. On the contrary, monthly volumes are still much higher compared to early 2021.
This is all the more relevant if we add the fact that OpenSea has lost its historical leadership in the sector to Blur in recent months.
So the situation is actually less serious than a superficial analysis might suggest, although the period the NFT market is currently going through is certainly not particularly prosperous.
Top collections
The top collection of the last seven days on OpenSea is indeed Milady Maker. Such has been the boom that in just four days it has risen to fourth place overall among the top collections of the last 30 days.
It was previously dominated by Mutant Ape Yacht Club, which is still in second place for the week, while in second place for the last 24 hours is Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Looking at the last 24 hours alone, Milady Maker dominated with 1,900 ETH of total trading volume, followed by Bored Ape Yacht Club with 1,300 and Mutant Ape Yacht Club with 1,200.
In fourth place is Pudgy Penguins with less than 1,000 ETH of daily trading volume.
In third place is Azuki with 12,000 ETH, almost on a par with Mutant Ape Yacht Club. This ranking is also dominated by Milady Maker with 13,000 ETH and a +231% increase from last week.
Trading volume
These numbers are not huge, but they are not insignificant either.
So at the moment the NFT market, especially on OpenSea, is by no means dead, and in fact is still alive and kicking.
However, it is still a long way from the highs of a genuine speculative bubble that was bound to burst, as all bubbles do sooner or later.
At the moment there is no sign of a speculative bubble in the sector, although micro-bubbles can form at certain times, such as the one that probably exists on the NFTs in the Milady Maker collection.
On the contrary, the fact that Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Azuki are still riding the crest of a wave, despite the bursting of the 2021 bubble, probably means that at least these collections do not seem destined for oblivion for the time being.
However, if a new big bubble starts to inflate, it is possible that other collections may be able to garner the most support, especially if they are new collections created just to ride the wave.
